Sunday, 19 December 2010

After 2 months of putting footage together bit by bit the final video is here! As always with footage you never quite get exactly what you want as we aren't lucky enough to have a dedicated camera man with us and we always want to sail instead of stand on a beach! But this is what I have made with the little footage we collected and I hope you enjoy it. I had a few problems rendering in the right format so apologies for any bad quality and although rendered in HD, Mpora seems not to be able to play in HD, not sure why?! Anyway here it is:

Friday, 17 December 2010

I'm home! Wow what a journey too... We left Ibiraquera at 11 in the morning, way too early for our evening flight but that was the only time we could get a lift. TAM airlines were amazing, they put us on an earlier flight to Sao Paulo so we could wait there instead of Florianopolis as there is not much there, and kept hold of our four 32-34kg kit bags and a suitcase. The best thing: they all went for free! We had a 6 hour wait in Sao Paulo in which chocolate French Crepes kept us happy, then the long 12 hour flight home. We were delayed an hour as they had to search for a guy's suitcase that hadn't got on the plane-a little worrying! So, what did I think of Ibiraquera? Well, firstly, it is an amazing, beautiful place that so few people know about! I couldn't believe that the average number of windsurfers on the water was about 5 and the kilometres of sand had no one on save but a few families at the weekend! This was the same as the surfing there; we had many sessions of just a few of us scoring all the waves, with maybe double the people at the weekend. Of course this all changes after Christmas, the Brazilian Summer, but that isn't when the best conditions are. So the conditions: we didn't have as much wind as we had hoped or was written on websites, but as with many places the locals said it has changed recently, and this year was also a cold year. However, the wind we got coincided well with the swell, giving us maybe 6-7 amazing big mast high days. Unfortunately for us these were mostly at the beginning of the trip when I was still learning port tack riding. October was definitely the best month. We also had all conditions varying from waist to mast high, cross off to cross on, port and starboard tack. I haven’t heard of a place where the wind switches 180 degrees and you can get a port and starboard tack session in the same day!We had equal amounts of surfing and windsurfing, which I am happy about as they complement each other and it definitely helped my wave sailing. We could have surfed more at the beginning had we known the rips, and the days we neither windsurfed or surfed we could haved SUPed, kitesurfed or done slalom had we the kit. Basically there is an opportunity to get out everyday at Ibiraquera if you have the right equipment (hiring from Clube Kauli Seadi helps here!). I will leave you with these pictures of a boom mount Go Pro of me doing a (rather wet) forward. They made me laugh as you see my facial expression progress, and until that footage I didn't realise I closed my eyes-must work on that!

A windsurf video is coming in the next few days, but for now here is our whale trip video that we made back in October but couldn't upload due to poor internet! We knew we couldn't miss an opportunity to do a video to Mr Scruff's 'Shanty Town'! Hope you enjoy it!

Wednesday, 8 December 2010

Heading out for a surf:Backside shot from markus swimming with the GoPro:Sunset surf:Another mast high day in our last week!Wave sequence:Aerial sequence:So it has been a pretty good week! We had some more really glassy surfing, nice head high earlier in the week to play with then bigger before the big swell hit for windsurfing. We were praying for another mast high day before we left and we got it! Some waves were over mast and we saw Christian get the wipeout of his life when one closed out on top of him out back! The wind wasn't ideal, really light in the morning 5-10 knots, making getting out all the more challenging, but the waves were really smooth. The afternoon brought 5-20 knots so it was easier to catch the waves you wanted, but you had to dodge a lot of kiters! I was working on hitting the lip really vertical on my waves causing a lot of wipeouts and swimming, but was super stoked to get my first big aerial (unfortunately not landed), on a logo high wave!

About Me

I started windsurfing when I was 16 on family watersports holidays once a year. I got properly hooked on my gap year in the British Army in 2005, competing and training in Egypt, Holland and the UK. During this year I saved some money for my own kit and in 2006 started studying aerospace engineering at Southampton University, joining the windsurf club. Sailing around the South coast with lots of friends provided lots of competition, and competing all around the country against other Universities in the Student Windsurf Association events gave me an appetite for competing. For the last couple of years at University I competed in the UK wave circuit, travelling to Wales, Ireland and Scotland. In 2010 after University I secured a job with a big engineering firm, Babcock, but managed to get a deferred entry and sailed in Brazil, Maui and the Canaries, competing in my first PWA event in Gran Canaria. Now I live and work in Plymouth in the UK and sail and surf as much as possible around my job.